SKATiT

SKAT's Challenge

SKAT's challenge was to have the AirBnB users to register their income from renting their home out on the AirBnB platform and thereby pay the required tax.

User insigths

The users want to pay the required tax

They need clear and understandable information

They need to be able to evaluate risks by calculating the basic personal allowance

They need automatising but still being in control

They need to feel safe and avoid making mistakes

The actual challenge

With interviews of the AirBnB users we found that the users are insecure of the tax rules related to renting their home out on AirBnB. One of the complex rules are that there is a basic personal allowance when renting private homes out. The basic personal allowance is depending how much they pay for their home. The rules being unclear makes the users insecure and afraid of making mistakes that they potentially could get fined for. So the problem is not that the users do not want to pay tax, but actually understanding the rules which puts the problem earlier in the user-journey than expected.

Concept

SKATiT is a tool that gives the user an overview on the connection between the basic personal allowance and the income from the AirBnB platform and simplifies the registration of the income to SKAT. The goal is that SKATiT need to meet the users' need of an overview of the tax rules and remove the fear having missed on information that could result in consequences for the user.

SKATiT is an application for smartphones, so it is right in the hand whenever the user needs it. SKATiT provides personal calculation by selecting the home type and typing in their yearly rent. In this way the user will be presented its own basic personal allowance and not a general example, which SKAT had currently on their website. In the right upper corner, the user can read about the rules related to renting out private homes that has been simplified and written in layman terms.

Innovation with organisation and user perspectives

Working on a business model canvas allowed us to get insight to the problem from a business perspective and a user perspective. How can we ensure value for both parties? SKAT is affected by a negative image among the danish population.

The picture to right is a visualisation of the created value with our concept, where the black arrows represents users and blue arrows represents SKAT. The main point of the visualisation is that by strengthening the channels (which is SKATiT in this case) to make it more easier to use for the users, it would make SKAT more available, the communication with SKAT would be easier which in turn will improve the relationship to SKAT. We believe that this will lead to the users have a stronger trust to SKAT and become less fearful of making mistakes.

Final remarks

The concept with calculating the basic personal allowance and the required tax as presented above was later implemented by SKAT on their website. Click here to see how they implemented the concept on their existing website.